Moms = Bad Luck Charms

Canucks management decided to break the mold. Instead of the Father-Son road trip, they had a Mom-Son roadtrip. It was a great idea. Good for the marketing, nice for the boys. Or at least the North American players. Why was there there no European moms?

C'mon, don't you wanna know what Sundin's mom looks like?

So a nice trip to warm, sunny Cali against some teams that are fighting to get a playoff spot was a great idea. In fact, if the playoffs were to start today, they wouldn't be even in the playoffs. These are teams that the Canucks should beat. We should get 4 points out of this.

But as a Canuck fan, I'm a little scared. We saw that the Canucks could rise up to the challenge and beat the Sharks last Saturday, but we've also seen the Canucks 'play down to their level' to so many crappy teams.

Well after last night, we saw a team that had problems. Most people were in denial, talking about cup contention when we were on a winning streak. We squeaked away with some wins against teams like the Leafs and the Lightning. But this road trip exposed them all.

I'm not going to blame the moms for this, because it's not like this happened just on this road trip.

Last year we had the best pk in the entire league. This year, we essentially have the same players, but the pk sucks.

The power play is not any better. If you have 5 power play opportunities against Anaheim, you HAVE to score. I know that Hillier was playing amazingly, but we're gonna encounter teams that have good goalies, those are now just excuses.

Every so often Louie will let in a bad goal. In fact he did last night. But I'm not upset, no, because he also had some GREAT saves. But if Sedin passes pucks to the other team, well, that's a problem. And after the overtime goal, you could see the anger coming from Louie. I'm sure what he said in the locker room after was not PG enough for the moms to hear.

Now that the Canucks are back home for a rematch against the Kings tomorrow. They need to pull it together. They need to show up and play like it means something. Oh wait, it does.

The one good thing that came out of last night? The awesome replay of the Wellwood goal. The best part clearly was after the goal went in, he hesitates about celebrating until he's sure it really did go in. You could see the wave of relief on him from that goal.